Chris Faulkner - Professor, Film Studies

My interests include Jean Renoir, French cinema and film theory. I am also a member of the Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture, which is home to the PhD in Cultural Mediations, an interdisciplinary PhD program which supports work in art history, film studies, literature, and music. (ICSLAC Website).

I have written four books on Renoir, including La Règle du jeu: scénario original de Jean Renoir (Nathan 1999) with Olivier Curchod, The Social Cinema of Jean Renoir (Princeton, 1986) and, most recently, Jean Renoir: A Conversation With His Films, 1894-1979 (Taschen, 2007), along with chapters in books and a number of articles on various aspects of French cinema in Screen, Film History, The Canadian Journal of Film Studies, French Politics and Society, French Cultural Studies, Persistence of Vision, etc.

I am particularly interested in France in the 1930s and my current projects are a study of the relations between cinema and society during that period and a history of the production and reception of Jean Renoir’s 1939 film La Règle du jeu. In addition to courses on various aspects of French cinema, I also teach courses on film theory, melodrama, and the work of filmmakers like Douglas Sirk and Rainer Werner Fassbinder.